"Trade isn't always fair," argues Rob Cameron, CEO of Fairtrade International. "It's the imbalance in trade that makes it necessary for fair trade to exist."
This argument formed part of a discussion on the sidelines of the UN Climate Change talks in Durban looking at sustainable and equitable carbon markets and financing alternatives.
Fair trade is an international system advocating a better deal for small-scale producers in the developing world. It establishes standards for producers and creates a more equitable framework for trade between small scale farmers and larger corporate buyers. According to Cameron, Fairtrade International represents 25 organisations that focus on giving producers a voice and enable consumers to come together to impact on food production and consumption.
A representative from a South American producers' network added that climate finance and carbon markets are not so much development but the reduction of carbon emissions, and that markets are often inaccessible to vulnerable communities due to the complexity of administering these projects.
According to the United Nations, the Clean Development Mechanism was developed under the Article 12 of the Kyoto Protocol and allows a country with an emission-reduction commitment to implement an emission-reduction project in developing countries. The Kyoto Protocol is a legal and binding international agreement linked to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and sets targets for 37 developed countries and the European community for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
"Carbon emissions are traded in exchange for money," says Keketso Jobo, a climate economist for the Lesotho government. "This falls under the Kyoto Protocol agreement where countries with huge carbon emission can make a trade-off with countries that have lower emissions and a tonne of carbon is equated to a value at a certain varying market rate".
The Director of ICCO, a Dutch faith-based development organisation, Win Hart, said that work was under way on a Fairtrade label for carbon credits for the carbon market in order to address some of the inequalities in the current system.
The carbon credit specialist for the Fair Climate Fund explained how the fund works.
"We are using the carbon market to make much more money available for sustainable development in the South," says Gert de Gans. "We do this because people in the South - or I should actually say the poor - are not occupying their carbon space to which they are entitled. This space has been occupied already by the rich without paying compensation to the people who are actually entitled to that space." De Gans says that through the carbon market the Fair Climate Fund tries to capitalise on this principle and make money available on the basis of generation of carbon credits, in order to speed up sustainable development among poor communities in the South.
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How does this work in practice?
People living in the rural areas of Ethiopia are highly dependent on wood for fuel, leading to deforestation and health complications. Aviy Ashenafi of the Horn of Africa Regional Environment Centre and Network in Addis Ababa believes that sustainable energy projects need to address three points.
"One, we have to provide alternative energy. Two, fuel efficiency is very important, so we provide cook stoves that is not only for fuel efficiency but for health," Ashenafi explained. "The third one is poverty, of course, because people do know that they want to buy cook stoves but they cannot buy it because they just don't have the money. So that is why we are trying to introduce an new mechanism to chip in the carbon credit market to make the price of the technologies a bit cheaper so people can access them."
A similar project in South Africa is called Basa Mogogo, which means "Light up, Grandmother!". It has pioneered a new ignition technique that eliminates smoke and reduces coal consumption by up to 50%.
Not everyone agrees that market based mechanisms such as the carbon market are viable solutions to climate change.
A protester at Occupy COP 17, Stephen Murphy, opposes market-based mechanisms. "We hopefully are not going to be talking about market-based mechanisms and all these economic indicators for solutions to climate change," said the Durban resident. "We want to know how we are going to leave the oil in the soil, how we are going to rid ourselves of fossil fuels, instead of negotiating ways to keep on polluting and then use clever mathematics to try and reduce emissions."
